


Still Waters

by BlueRobinWrites



Category: Cormoran Strike Series - Robert Galbraith
Genre: F/F, Michelle has questions, Michelle is NOT shy, Michelle is observant, Robin...Is Robin.
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-30
Updated: 2020-09-30
Packaged: 2021-03-07 21:21:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,474
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26734279
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlueRobinWrites/pseuds/BlueRobinWrites
Summary: Robin and Michelle have a conversation.
Relationships: Robin Ellacott & Michelle Greenstreet
Comments: 33
Kudos: 90





	Still Waters

“So what’s the deal with Strike?” Michelle Greenstreet asked, her brown eyes lit with a curiosity Robin recognized from her own mirror. 

“Deal?” she asked, though she knew perfectly well what the woman seated across from her meant. 

Michelle had been with the agency for a month now and she and Robin had almost immediately started working on a tricky case that had led to them spending quite a bit of time together. As a result, they’d quickly become comfortable with each other, and frequently met for lunch to share information about the twin brothers they were tailing, who were suspected of switching places by one of their wives. 

Each woman had started tailing a brother, and noting all of the characteristics, idiosyncrasies and gestures of the one they were following that day. Then, the following day, they’d swap targets. This allowed them to each get a good feel for the two brothers in their own rights...and thus, make it easier to determine if they really were swapping as the wife suspected. 

“Yeah, deal. He’s sexy as fuck, but my observations say he’s single. So I want to know the deal. Call it professional curiosity,” Michelle shrugged as she took a bite of her sandwich. 

“Are you interested?” Robin asked, trying to sound casual, but judging from the quick lift of the other woman’s eyebrow, she feared she’d failed. 

“I am  _ not _ ,” she said emphatically. “But I think you are,” she tilted her head, assessing Robin, who was holding a crisp aloft in shock, carefully. “And why shouldn’t you be? You’re also sexy as fuck, and single, and obviously you two get on well.”

“Yes we do, but honestly, we’re just mates,” Robin shrugged. “Best mates really,” she qualified. 

Michelle, who had taken another bite of her sandwich, motioned for her to continue. 

“I don’t know what else to say really. We met almost four years ago when I was sent to the agency as a temporary secretary. My first day was the day he got the Landry case, and I assisted him with a few things. He solved the case and I guess we both enjoyed working together, and I just...stayed? I guess.”

“OK, and in almost four years you haven’t been anything more than friends?” Michelle pressed.

Robin, sensing that this question was coming, had taken a large bite of her sandwich just as Michelle had started to speak and so, mouth full, she shrugged and shook her head. Hoping Michelle would take it as the full story, because there wasn’t much else to tell. Was there?

“I don’t buy it,” Michell tossed a balled up paper napkin on the table next to her plate. “No. There’s got to be more to it, to the two of you, than that. How did you go from secretary to partner in the span of four years?”

Robin swallowed and set her sandwich down, reaching for her drink, and clarified, “It was one year actually.”

“He made you his partner in one year?”

“Yes.”

“Why?” she asked, and seeing Robin’s eyebrows lowering, she hastened to interject, “Listen, I’m not accusing you, or him, of anything improper. God knows...Women get enough of that from whiny ass men who get their bollocks in a twist anytime a woman gets anything they think should be theirs.”

Robin filed the vehemence with which this was said away for further pondering and possible discussion. 

Michelle continued, “I just wondered how you went from secretary to full partner in a year. It’s impressive. That’s all.”

“Well,” she took a deep breath, “I guess it was as simple as, Strike needed someone to help pick up some slack after he’d solved the Landry case, and I’d been interested in investigation since I was a child. So I started taking on some of the surveillance, and I’ve always been better at the online searches than he is,” she laughed. “But after the second big case we’d worked together, he gave me a surveillance course, as a Christmas present and called me ‘Partner’ afterward.” She left out the way he’d kissed her hand. Nor did she mention the way the memory of that still touched off the feeling of butterflies in her stomach. 

“That’s an interesting Christmas gift!”

“It was. It was exactly what I wanted. And while he referred to me as his partner after that, I was really only a junior partner, until he fired me,” she grinned, knowing how the other woman would react, and then took another bite of her sandwich. 

On cue, Michelle erupted, “Wait! He  _ fired _ you?”

“He did indeed.” She nodded, chuckling, as she took a sip from her soda.

“What the fuck?! Why?”

“Well, the case we were working at that point was a pretty,” she paused, looking for the right word, “fraught situation. We had three suspects, all connected to him, and it was very tense. Especially after we received the toe.”

“Oh wait, was this the Shacklewell Ripper?”

“Yes.” 

“I remember this one. The whole department was interested because you got sent a,” she stopped, unsure. 

“A leg,” Robin confirmed. “And I found out that one of the three suspects was living with a woman who had two young girls. He’d been brought up on charges when he’d been in the Army for raping his stepdaughter,” Robin clenched her fist under the table. Still angry at the thought of Brockbank and his victims. 

“And he got off?”

“Well, Strike was the investigating officer and when he interviewed the daughter she recanted. Plus, the arrest didn’t go as smoothly as it could have and he ended up walking away, with the stepdaughter in tow.”

“Fuck,” Michelle drew the word out.

“Exactly. While we were investigating him we found out, from his sister, that he was working as a bouncer in stripclubs here in London. So Strike spent some time taking a tour of the stripclubs and found where he’d just been fired from. The woman he talked to said that Brockbank was dating a woman, told him she had two kids, and which area of London, and so I started calling the daycare centers,” she shrugged.

“Fucking brilliant,” Michelle laughed. 

“And not really something Strike would have thought of, but we’d done something similar for the Landry case to get the address of a witness that he needed to speak to and so I tried again. Posed as the stripper he was dating, got the address and I went there to talk to the stripper,” Robin trailed off.

“Oh shit...I’m guessing it didn’t go well,” Michelle leaned forward, wincing.

“It did not. Long story short, the suspect came home, found me there. The stripper started telling him what I’d told her, he tried to attack me, and then bolted.” She carefully edited Shanker’s involvement out, sure that Shanker himself would approve, given his less, reputable dealings.

“Bastard.”

“Exactly,” Robin agreed. “So Carver calls Strike --”

“Fucking Carver. What a waste of oxygen.”

“Not a fan then?” Robin chuckled.

Michelle scoffed, “Not hardly. Told me I was a ‘jumped up secretary’ and ordered me to go get him a coffee, when I was moved into his division. So he can go fuck himself off a cliff for all I care. But, go on. I’m dying for the rest.”

Robin laughed at her eagerness, “Well nothing really. The suspect had bolted and at that point he was our only lead, Carver was livid, threatened Strike and I with obstruction of justice. Strike was fuming, because I’d gone against orders. We rowed, he fired me, and I left. Went back to Masham to marry my ex-husband.”

“You were married?”

“I was. The divorce was finalized a little bit ago.”

“Ah,” Michelle drawled. “I see. So that explains some of it.”

“Some of what exactly?”

“Tension.”

“Tension?” Robin repeated.

“Girl, you two are wound tighter than a priest in a brothel.” Michelle laughed at the expression of disbelief on Robin’s face and waved a hand through the air dismissively, before going on, “Nevermind that, we’ll come back to it. So he fired you, you got married...Then what?”

Robin wasn’t sure she should go on with the rest. She knew how it would sound. Strike showing up at her wedding, and asking her to come back. 

It did sound dreadfully romantic. 

But it hadn’t been. 

Not really.

She went for comedy, hoping it would belay the more ‘romantic’ seeming parts of this part of the story. 

“Well, he gatecrashed the wedding,” she laughed. 

“He did what?!” Michelle nearly shouted.

“He’d been invited, but he hadn’t RSVPed and then he’d fired me, so I hadn’t thought he’d come. But he did. He walked into the church just as Matt and I were finishing our vows and he ended up knocking over an entire bank of flowers,” she snickered remembering the consternation on Strike’s face in that moment, the anger on Matthew’s, and the joy that seeing him had touched off in her heart.

“He gatecrashed your wedding, knocked over your flowers, during your vows,  _ after _ he’d fired you...And you don’t think you two…” she trailed off, shaking her head in disbelief.

“It wasn’t like that though. He’d only gatecrashed because he’d solved the case and he’d come to ask me to come back to work,” Robin protested. 

“I see,” she didn’t sound like she did though. 

“He wanted to let me know he’d caught Laing is all. And that Brockbank had been caught by your lot.”

“Score one for the Met.”

“And then,” she shrugged. “He asked me to come back and I agreed, but I told him I wanted a proper contract. And so, full partner. That’s it.”

“Makes sense,” Michelle acceded. “But I still think there’s...something. You two are like a clock. One of you moves, the other moves, and you make everything around you work.”

“Well, but that’s teamwork though,” Robin protested. “We just understand each other really well. And we’ve spent years building the agency together, so we have a similar vision.”

“You would, absolutely, but that’s not it. Do you not see the way he looks at you?”

“Probably the same way I look at him,” Robin shrugged, turning her attention back to her crisps and wishing desperately this conversation would just end. 

“Yes. Exactly,” Michelle exclaimed, gesturing toward Robin as though she’d actually agreed with Michelle’s suppositions. 

“No...Not exactly. There is no exactly.”

“You really don’t have any feelings for him then?” Michelle sat forward in her chair. 

“I love him,” she said, holding up a hand as Michelle’s mouth snapped open. 

“I love him. Absolutely. He’s my best mate,” she stressed. “We’ve been through a lotl with each other. He gave me a job I love. He’s put his faith in me where others didn’t and I owe him a great deal for that. He’s a good man and an excellent partner, and my very closest friend.”

Michelle nodded, her eyes sympathetic, “Right...and the one person you want to talk to whenever something happens. The first person you call when you have a funny story, or something weird to discuss. The one person you know won’t judge you, or make you feel less than. Am I right?” 

Robin blinked against the start of tears, because she couldn’t deny it, much as she wanted to. 

Cormoran was all those things and more. 

Hearing his voice soothed her immeasurably and he absolutely was the first person she wanted to share anything with. 

She knew that if someone could get a look at their phone records they’d see that the person they called or texted the most would be each other. 

But, that was normal with best mates, wasn’t it? 

She was close to Ilsa and Vanessa, and could see herself becoming very good friends with Michelle, if the other woman would let this subject drop, but she had to admit, even if it was just to herself, none of them knew the things Cormoran knew about her. 

Not because she didn’t trust them, but because Cormoran was the one she trusted  _ most _ . She knew he wouldn’t use what he knew about her past against her the way her mother, family and Matthew did, even when they may not have meant to. 

Cormoran just accepted the facts, understood that they affected her at times, and quietly supported her. 

Just as she did with him and his past. 

They just understood each other. 

It wasn’t anything more than that. 

It couldn’t be. 

Michelle sat, waiting, face expectant, across the table. Her chin rested in her hand, her elbow on the table. She was fascinated by the ripple of emotions that had just crossed Robin’s face. 

But she was also fascinated by the fact that Robin, one of the most observant people she’d ever met, even after years on The Met, was unable to see how deeply in love with her, her partner was. 

But as the silence stretched, and Robin stayed silent, she started to wonder if she’d have been better off leaving this conversation alone. 

In the few weeks she’d been working with the agency she’d noticed that Strike and Robin seemed to be engaged in a very interesting dance of sorts. They were entirely comfortable with each other, so much so that she’d once seen Robin reach over to his plate with her fork, during a staff meeting, and steal some of his chicken jalfrezi. This had been done without Strike blinking an eye. 

She’d also noticed that Strike’s eyes seemed to follow Robin. If Robin was moving, Strike was watching. But it wasn’t lascivious. It was focus and interest as though he was trying to puzzle something about her out. 

But he also knew her well enough to order food for her without her input, make her tea, and rifle through her drawers looking for a secret stash of biscuits he knew she kept hidden from him so he wouldn’t eat them all.

Their relationship was interesting and odd, but it was very obviously comfortable and caring. 

Strike always deferred to Robin in staff meetings, referring to her as, “Ellacott,” or sometimes, obviously taking the piss, “The Boss.” And it stood out to her that Strike, whose name was on the door, would so openly defer to Robin, showing her the respect he felt she’d earned.. 

And it was these things, taken with the glances, and texts she’d witnessed Robin getting and smiling at, that made her believe there was more between them than meets the eye. 

“Listen, I didn’t mean to upset you,” she laid a consoling hand on the table. “I was just teasing, but only because I was sure something was going on with you.”

“It’s OK,” Robin said, as she tucked her hair behind her ear. “I know it must seem like that. And you’re certainly not the first to assume. But Strike and I…” she trailed off, tilting her head, seeming to search for words. “Strike and I...you see...He…”

“You don’t know how he feels, he doesn’t know how you feel, and because of that neither of you have made a move?” Michelle inferred.

“Yes?” Robin said, questioningly. “I think...Yes.”

“OK then. How do you feel about him?”

“What?”

Michelle held in the laugh at the complete shock on Robin’s face at the question. 

“I said, how do you feel about him?”

“As a…”

“Boyfriend, sexual partner, life mate. Take your pick.

“Um. Well...I’ve never let myself think that far before. So I don’t know,” Robin picked up her soda and took a swallow. 

“Why haven’t you let yourself think that far before? I mean, what’s holding you back?”

“Well, obviously at first I was married.”

“Right. OK. But after that? You’ve been separated for, how long now?”

“Year and a half almost?”

“OK, so, you haven’t been married for a year and a half and you work with an incredibly dynamic and sexy man, who looks at you like…”

“Like what?” Robin interjected.

“Like you’re his brand of whiskey and he wants to drink the bottle dry,” Michelle chuckled. 

“He does not!”

“He does too. It’s adorable.”

“You’re full of it,” Robin accused. 

“Am not!”

“You are taking the  _ piss _ Michelle Greenstreet.”

“Not a bit of it. The man looks at you like you’re a puzzle he wants to fit himself into. And you should let him.”

“He has never once, ever, acted that way toward me.”

“Oh, he has. You’ve just not realized it.”

“He doesn’t. I’m not…”

“You’re not what?” Michelle demanded. 

“Look. I was married to a man who assumed that Strike and I were having an affair, despite the fact that Strike has never, not once ever made a pass at me. He’s barely ever even touched me.”

“That doesn’t mean he isn’t interested.”

“Fair enough, but he hasn’t shown it. And I haven’t said because I don’t know if he is. And we share the agency and he’s my  _ best mate _ and I don’t want to risk that,” Robin could hear the panic rising in her own voice. She took a deep breath, “And I’m also not Strike’s type.”

“You are  _ absolutely _ his type.”

“No. I’m not,” Robin shook his head. “He’s dated models, and radio presenters who look like models, and a socialite I’ve heard him refer to as ‘the most beautiful woman in the world’. I am  _ none _ of those things.”

“No. You aren’t,” Michelle said consolingly, before laughing, “You’re better than those. You’re entirely lovely, gorgeous even,” she held up a hand as Robin began to protest. “I’m the one looking at you, and if I swung your way, I’d swing your way,” she said, with a little eyebrow wiggle, designed to make Robin laugh. 

“Add to that, you’re interested in the same things he is, you’re not going to get upset when he has to work late, and vice versa. You two move around each other like planets orbiting the sun. When one of you moves, the other takes notice, and it’s obvious, even to me, in the brief amount of time I’ve been around you both, that you have an almost telepathic connection. You are  _ meant _ to be together.”

Robin just sat, unable to deny any of what Michelle had just laid out on the table, but also unable to agree. 

She knew how she felt about her partner. 

She had known for a while now. 

She wanted to know what his beard felt like against her face as he kissed her lips. 

She wanted to know how his hair felt and she already knew, from the increasing number of hugs they’d shared, that his arms were comforting and safe. 

She knew she wanted him. 

She just wasn’t so sure the feeling was mutual. 

“So what do you think I should do?” she capitulated to the other woman’s assertions. 

“I don’t know. I really don’t. But I know this,” she leaned in. “Still waters run deep my friend. Strike is a pretty quiet guy, is that fair to say?”

“He is.”

“In my experience, men who don’t run their mouths, know how to use their mouths in better ways. Men that don’t brag about their conquests, or talk about their relationships with the coworkers, they’re the ones who really give a shit about their significant other. You ever heard him talk about any of the women he’s dated?”

“No. But someone we interviewed a while back mentioned something about someone he’d slept with giving him high marks.”

“How did he react?”

“He didn’t.”

“Exactly. Still waters run deep, Robin. And I’m betting Strike has some deep,” she drew the word out. “Waters. I’d be willing to bet he’s going to be exactly what you need and all it will take is one little hint from you that you’re interested, and you’re going to find out. Because the man is in over his head and struggling to stay above water at this point.”

Robin’s phone signaled an incoming text.

She glanced at it.

_ You want to grab dinner tonight? You can catch me up on the case. _

_ S x _

She glanced up at Michelle, who was suspiciously looking the other way, eyes narrowed at the door of the house they were meant to be watching. 

Robin smiled. 

And took her shot. 

_ Sure. But can we make it just dinner? _

_ No work? I think I need a break. _

_ R x _

Two minutes later,

_ Roger that.  _

_ It’s a date. _

_ S x _

Smiling, Robin pocketed her phone, looked at Michelle, who’d made to stand. “See you tomorrow? Same time?”

“Sure. Good luck.”

“Thanks,” she said with a smile. 

“You won’t need it though,” Michelle chuckled. 

“We’ll see,” she grinned back. 

And with a wave of farewell, they walked away, one to follow the client’s husband, the other to follow the brother. 


End file.
